Going into the project my essential question has been Does using hand tools and traditional woodworking methods to make a bass create a strong artistic connection between me and the instrument? And in my time working on the bass nothing has made me feel more connected to the bass then carving the neck and fretboard. The neck and the fretboard are what I consider to be the user interface of the instrument. It’s often the shape and size of the neck that determines the “feel” of a guitar or bass and there is a lot of personal preference from player to player about what feels best. There were a few dimensions that I knew I wanted my neck to have, but after filing the neck down flat to the height and width I wanted at the the first and 14th fret I had to carve a curved shape  to what felt good to me. This was the first time in the project there wasn’t a line to cut or file to and i just had to work free hand and based feel.  The entire process took hours and hours of filing and scraping to get a uniform shape that I liked but I found myself lost in the work. Checking the progress in my own hands every few minutes to make sure i was going in the right direction. I found myself bothered and obsessed with the smallest inconsistencies that I could only feel by hand.